


so darkness I became

by shatterthelight



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2018-12-30 13:11:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12109437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shatterthelight/pseuds/shatterthelight
Summary: In which Rose is Hades, Luisa is Persephone, and freedom lies in the darkest crevice of the world.





	so darkness I became

**Author's Note:**

> You guys have no idea how delighted my pretentious little self is that I got this done in time to post it on the first of October.
> 
> And here I was thinking I'd never write an AU for these two. I do worry the characterizations here might be a bit too loose, but the themes of Hades and Persephone are themes I've associated with Roisa for the _longest_ time (even if this story does take a lot of liberties with the myth) so this was all bound to happen eventually.
> 
> Trigger warning for the mention of suicide several times throughout.

Her mother's blood had been the color of the poppy flowers that break the surface in the spring, scarlet petals adorning her lifeless body. Luisa had been young, a child who still believed in the immortality of dreaming, when she caught the glint of a silver knife still clung within stiff fingers and tasted ghosts in the stale air.

Not saying a word, she had fled to the human world and curled her body into the low-hanging branch of a cherry tree, where she wrote her name in all the snow-white blossoms and sang, in a hushed whisper, the lullaby her mother had once used to carry her through restlessness nights. She'd stayed there until she felt the echo of her father's grief in her ears and knew his soul was calling out for hers.

The next time she sees her mother, she is fireflies in the wind, a gift from the gods to the thrumming mortal earth, but phantoms linger behind Luisa’s eyelids. 

 

* * *

 

She first meets the goddess of death on a warm summer evening after an afternoon of cicada music and rainfall. By now, the buds of her childhood features have bloomed into those of a young adult: dark hair, curved bosom, long-lashed eyes flecked with the colors of every season. 

The woman blends so seamlessly into the shadows that at first Luisa thinks her eyes are only playing tricks on her. But then the goddess tilts her head, and red hair spills over her shoulder, like blood trickling from an open wound.

She recognizes her from the stories her father used to tell; he'd carved her features out of sharp words and dark, swirling imagery, imagery brought now to life before her. The woman is statuesque, as pale as the dead she rules over, and her eyes hold winter and winter alone. Black silk drapes her long, willowy limbs, and her lips are... _pink_ , pink as blush wine and sunsets.

The goddess walks towards her, and though she knows her father would tell her to run, she stays rooted to the spot, her bare feet sinking into the still-damp ground.

"You," her voice is the tinkling of windchimes, "are far from home."

"You're Lady Death." It isn't a question.

The corners of the goddess's mouth quirk into a smile too gentle for her face. "Perhaps," she says, "though I'll admit that I've always preferred the name Rose."

_Rose_. The name is soft, yet something about the shape of it suits her.

It's clear from the mischievous dance of her expression that Rose knows who _she_  is. Daughter of the king of the gods, child born of lightning and spring, a wandering spirit who has left flowers growing in her path from the moment she could walk. But she offers her name anyway, wanting, with sudden urgency, to be more than her own epithets. "Luisa."

"Luisa," Rose repeats, the way she draws out every syllable sending a shiver up Luisa's spine. "I'm quite pleased to meet you."

She's been drawing closer as they speak, and now she stands only inches away. The goddess lays a hand against her cheek, and Luisa flinches away from the icy touch.

Rose's smile vanishes, hand dropping to her side. When she extends that hand again, it's to press six pomegranate seeds into Luisa's palm. "If you bite down on one of these, I will come to you again."

Luisa blinks, and the goddess is gone.

 

* * *

 

She returns to the clearing four nightfalls later, giving in to her curiosity against her better judgment. After she makes sure she's alone, she bites down on the pomegranate seed, sticky sweetness spreading over her tongue. 

Nothing happens. Her fingers tremble and tug at her hair, and nothing happens, and she curses her foolishness and turns for home.

And when she turns, the goddess is before her.

Her pale skin glows in the moonlight, and she wears the same soft smile from their first encounter. Luisa wraps her arms around herself as a chill overtakes the air. There is fear in her chest, but so, too, is there a yearning to understand, nestled right in the corner where her caution should be.

"Why did you approach me that day?" Luisa asks.

Rose strides forward, tall and regal. "You caught my eye."

She's catching Rose's eye right now. She can see it in the way Rose looks her up and down with awe, as though she's beholding something holier than a goddess. "And what would Lady Death see in me?"

Rose stands right in front of her now, just like that first day. She raises her hand and then halts, eyes searching for consent this time, permission to hold what she knows she does not own.

And Luisa, thinking herself terribly unwise, gives it to her by way of a nod.

Her touch is still ice, but instead of shivering, Luisa flushes, heat prickling along the back of her neck. The Underworld's ruler leans in closely, and whispers, right into her ear, "Life."

Rose pulls back, a covetous grin gracing her lips. Luisa's eyes flicker down to those lips, and, never one to resist the wiles of an elegant woman, she swallows the desire to kiss them.

Hunger burns in Luisa's abdomen, an unfamiliar craving for all things forbidden. But there is too much danger to be found in such desires, and her fear resurfaces at the thought of her father's disapproval.

"I don't want this," she lies. Her heart shudders, and she braces herself for wrath.

But the wrath does not come. Rose looks forlorn, but there is no anger in the heaviness of her gaze, only a solemnity that softens her further. "I will not take what you do not wish to give."

She melts away into the darkness, leaving Luisa to turn those words over in her head.

 

* * *

 

"Father," she prays her tone is offhand, "tell me again about Lady Death." 

He shoots her a look of surprise, displeasure creasing his features. "What of her?" 

Even before meeting her, Luisa has, on an intellectual level, always understood the goddess of death to be a real figure, lurking in the depths of the Underworld. But when she was little, the stories had sounded just like that: stories. Tales meant to frighten children from striding too far from the path, lest they be devoured by the wolf. But even if she'd been inclined to believe their meetings a dream, the pomegranate seeds are an undeniable reminder of what she's seen.

"What is she truly like?"

"Cold," he says immediately. That has always been his first and favorite word for her. _Cold_. "She is a dangerous, bloodthirsty woman who thrives on the pain of the dead and the suffering. She is a monster," that word comes out harsh and cutting, "who is to be avoided."

Doubt fills her head. The goddess had not seemed a monster. Cold, yes, and intimidating, larger than the earth on which she stood. But not a monster. "Of course."

She makes to walk away, but her father grips her forearm. "Has something happened, little bird?"

Her eyes, unwavering, meet his. "No," she says, and it is the first lie she ever tells him.

 

* * *

 

In the days that follow, roses weave themselves into her hair of their own volition. At first she plucks them away, but they just keep growing back, as flowers are apt to do. Eventually she relents, leaving them to make a crown out of her surreptitious lust.

The five remaining pomegranate seeds, crimson and ripe no matter the time that passes, taunt her with their possibilities. She hides them away and does not summon the goddess again, but this does nothing to keep death from her mind. Spirits whisper in her ears, and their voices are a little too welcoming; her dreams are bloodied hands and a staircase of bone, and her nightmares are her mother, arms open to demise.

In the empty halls of Mount Olympus, she sits with her legs crossed and lights candles for the departed, and one day her brother stumbles upon her while she's singing quiet hymns and holding the hand of loneliness.

She doesn't notice him right away, for Rafael does not interrupt. It isn't until her voice curls over the final note of the song before he says, "You're playing a dangerous game."

Luisa startles and glances to see him looking her over in disdain. When they were newborn stars of seperate wombs, they had held each other closely. But their father favors his daughter's mannered light over his son's uncontainable fire. Rafael knows it as well as she, and now that they've grown into adults, he holds it against her like it's a fault of her own.

He is arrogant, Rafael, a war god built from silent fury, but there is no merit to his self-righteousness. She knows this, for he spends his nights at the side of the golden-haired, vindictive goddess of love. But he spends all the waking moments he can spare with a dark-eyed mortal whose name Luisa will never dare breathe, and this secret, carried between the two siblings alone, is the sole reason he leaves Luisa to follow her own decisions.

It does not, however, stop him from condemning them.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she says, snuffing the candles out.

He scoffs. "Your mother trifled with death," he says, "and it didn't end well for her. I advise you not to make the same mistake."

That night, she dreams of her father's hand wrapped around her mother's throat, and she opens her eyes and thinks of poppies.

 

* * *

 

A hundred hours later, she wakes at midnight with a whimper on her lips, sweat beading her forehead, chest heaving, thighs clutched together. She falls back into her pillow with heavy breaths, but nothing quells the fire burning between her legs. 

Roses of every color overtake her entire bed, vines curled around her yet not a single one tying her down, and she sits up freely, pomegranate seeds cradled in her hand. Her father would spurn her for what she wishes to do. Though this, perhaps, is why she does it anyway.

She steals away to the clearing once more, wearing nothing but a wispy nightdress and a single white rose in her hair, and she bites down on this seed with much more vigor than the previous.

The goddess arrives in a gust of wind. "I was beginning to think you wouldn't call for me again."

Luisa, bones aching, launches forward, gripping Rose by the shoulders and kissing her ravenously. Rose stumbles backward, surprised – and oh, to catch Lady Death off guard – but she kisses Luisa back, and then they're tearing their gowns over their heads and Luisa's back is to the ground, Rose's teeth grazing her skin as her hungry mouth navigates downwards.

Luisa tears at the grass until her moans crescendo, and then Rose is _laughing_ , such a bright and unmonstrous sound. 

"What," and gods, she can hardly catch her breath, "is so funny?"

Rose slips the blossom out of Luisa's hair and holds it to her face. What had been a white flower is now red, bright red, red as blood and pomegranates, and Luisa, pulse pounding, laughs too.

 

* * *

 

With four seeds left, she is wary with the knowledge that this exhilaration cannot last. So she savors her borrowed time, only letting herself indulge in these divine nights when the whole of her soul aches for them. But when it does – when the desire runs so deep it's unbearable – she and Rose collide during the witching hours and lose themselves in each other.

The nightmares continue, growing in clarity. The fog in her memory fades, revealing cages made not from iron, but from serrated words and bellowed claims of possession. Vivid images flash through her mind. Father, mother, mother, father, broken wings and the violence of suicide and questions she has never allowed herself to ask. 

Only a god can kill a god, and in the case of her mother, that god had been herself, with a blade and buried intentions. Luisa digs those intentions up now and wraps herself around them with the thought that _daughter_  and _prisoner_  are not such different words.

She bites the fourth seed with tears on her face, and when she tries to leap straight into the fire, Lady Death does not allow it.

"Something is on your mind," Rose murmurs.

It tumbles out in a breathless stream. "My mother," she intertwines her fingers with Rose's, "killed herself," Rose kisses her hair with all the softness of a feather, "and I think I finally understand why."

 

* * *

 

Their penultimate meeting is laden with a fevered disquiet. After this, Luisa will have one seed left, and the mutual awareness of it hangs over their heads.

"What happens when the last one is gone?" Luisa is already straddling her naked body over Rose's as she asks it.

"That," Rose says, "is up to you."

This is only a temporary thing. Luisa has always known that. So she relishes the sound of Rose's pleasured moans, determined to enjoy it while it lasts.

She has done this enough times without being caught that she's now allowed herself to think it will never happen. But after Rose fades into the shadows, Luisa pulls her dress back over her head and turns to stare right into the eyes of her brother.

He's peering out from his hiding spot behind a nearby tree, staring at her with a combination of horror and satisfaction, and panic slams into her from all sides. He has never visited the mortal world at night, and it had never occurred to her that he would risk to follow her, so she had tricked herself into believing in the safety of the darkness.

"Rafael," she chokes out helplessly. He has no reason to keep this secret. Rafael gave his love to a human girl, but Luisa gave hers to the goddess of death, and they both know which transgression their father will look worse upon. " _Please_."

Triumph spreads across his face.

 

* * *

 

Luisa is fast, but Rafael is faster.

Her father strikes her face and he has never hit her before, and it sends her sprawling out on the floor, cheek stinging, salt burning her eyes.

"What have you _done_?" His fury is not silent; it is an all-encompassing boom of thunder, and she shrinks into herself. " _Have you never listened to a word I've said?_ "

"Don't you see? She's crazy," Rafael says, voice dripping with venom, "just like her mother."

_Crazy_. The word slices her open and buries itself beneath her skin. Blood roars in her ears, fierce and deafening. Luisa has always been the daughter of lightning, and so she picks herself up off the floor and screams the wild and free scream of an uncaged animal. Her father and brother go still as statues, paralyzed by the storm clawing itself out of her.

"Little bird," her father stammers, and he does not dare move a muscle, "she is a monster, and you do not belong to her." Desperation clings to him. "You belong to me."

She softens at his terror. He is telling the truth – or rather, he believes so to his very core. He is wrong, of course. But there is no hatred in his eyes. Only love.

And this is what gives her the strength to say, "No. I belong to myself."

 

* * *

 

The final pomegranate seed tastes like liberation. Luisa blinks, and Rose is there, and the air between them is warm and unhaunted.

Head held high, Luisa speaks with the authority of a queen. "I'm coming with you." 

Rose nods, but asks, nonetheless, "Is that what you want?"

In answer, life holds her hand out to death. And death, with tender reverence, accepts it.


End file.
